Immigration law debated

Sunday

COLUMBIA - A packed committee room brought supporters and detractors on both sides of state lawmakers' push to bring an Arizona-style illegal-immigration law to the Palmetto State.

Jean Saunders, an immigration attorney for the Carolinas chapter of The American Immigration Lawyers Association, said such legislation would be unconstitutional and clash with federal laws.

On a practical level, she said it would hamper community policing activities, strain law enforcement budgets and discourage neighborhood cooperation. Saunders also said legal residents and citizens could be harassed and detained if they could not readily produce documents to prove their legal status.

In July a federal judge gutted Arizona's new law, which required law enforcement to check immigration status while enforcing other laws. Arizona's governor has appealed the injunction.

Sen. Larry Grooms, a Berkeley County Republican, had introduced similar legislation late in the last legislative session, but the bill did not have time to move beyond the committee level.

Roan Garcia-Quintana, the executive director of Americans Have Had Enough! and a fixture at legislative panel meetings addressing immigration, voiced his support for Grooms' effort.

"American citizens in general and South Carolinians in particular have not given their consent of higher taxes, crowded schools, jammed emergency rooms, clogged roads, unlawful turning of single-family homes into hotels or apartments and tenements, for multi-cultural amenities, such as bilingual education ... and welfare and other services subsidizing poverty-prone immigrants," said the Cuban immigrant.

"We're under a state of invasion."

The panel Wednesday consisted of Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, and senators Larry Martin, R-Pickens, and Chip Campsen, R-Charleston. S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center attorney Tammy Besherse testified that the cost of enforcing an Arizona-style law would be crippling to South Carolina, and that Arizona's discussion of its legislation included many areas in which the costs were yet to be determined. A League of Women Voters representative also spoke against any attempt to bring Arizona's legislation to the state.

The meeting room in the Gressette Building was one of a series held across the state to gather public comments on state efforts to further reduce illegal immigration in South Carolina. In 2008 the Legislature approved tougher requirements for businesses to meet in verifying the legal status of employees.

In some cases Wednesday night visitors who spoke complained about immigration, as a whole, instead of illegal immigration.

One man told the panel that he had locked himself out of his car and approached a woman sitting on the porch of a home who was holding a phone in her hand. She did not speak English, however, and so he was unable to communicate his need to borrow her phone to call a locksmith.

"My language and culture are in danger of being lost," he said.

"Please make it possible for neighbors to be able to help neighbors again."

Reach Sarita Chourey at sarita.chourey@morris.com or (803) 727-4257.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.